Sunday, October 6, 2019

Food Retail Partnerships Deliver Success

Once again this year our team has been talking a lot
about “The
65 Inch HDTV Syndrome” that Foodservice Solutions® Tacoma, WA based Grocerant
Guru®,
Steven Johnson was the first to identify, quantify, and qualify for clients and
the industry. Why, have we been talking about; simply it drives sales.

Foodservice Solutions®
team loves leaving success clues and when we learned that Olo, a leading digital food ordering platform
for the restaurant industry, announced that it is working together with Google
to enable customers to order directly from restaurant brands across Google Search, Maps and the Google
Assistant we has to share the news about the new electricity this
partnership could drive for your brand.

So, the integration allows Olo’s network
of more than 70,000 restaurant brand locations to be enabled on Google’s
platforms so that consumers can order directly on Google from Search and Maps.
Users can also use their voice and ask the Google Assistant for help. On
Android and iOS phones, users can say, “Hey Google, order food from
[restaurant],” or “Hey Google, order food again from [restaurant].”

Olo’s platform called Rails, enables
restaurants to efficiently process orders originating from third-party
destinations, is now integrated across Search, Maps and the Google Assistant,
transferring each order directly into the restaurant’s point of sale and
ordering stream to improve operations efficiency and guest experience.

Brands working with Olo and Google enjoy
efficiencies of a two-way integration, benefiting from accurate pricing, menu,
and product availability, while inbound orders are automatically placed into
existing point-of-sale (POS) systems. Rails makes it easy for restaurant
operators to list menu items on third-party marketplaces and drive incremental
sales without the need to manage multiple tablets on the restaurant counter and
disparate order flows. This integration reduces lag, increases order success
rates, and enables faster and more accurate ordering experiences.

Noah Glass, founder and CEO of Olo stated “Search is increasingly becoming the
path to purchase in the restaurant space and we are thrilled to team up with
Google to make ordering easy while allowing restaurants to own the digital
relationship with their guests,” …”Any consumer searching for a restaurant
brand should have easy options to order from the restaurant directly with as
few clicks as possible, which is what this integration enables.”

The integration is one of the latest
tools to help restaurant brands receive online orders. Portillo’s Hot Dogs and
Checkers & Rally’s were the first Olo brands to pioneer this integration
with Google, providing enablement to their high-volume locations for customers.
Is your brand ready to grow? Are you looking for some new electricity?

Consumers are dynamic not static how is
your brand keeping up with consumer demand for fresh fast food? How are you
driving new electricity into your brand?

All food and beverage retailers to
survive the next generation of retail must embrace the artificial intelligence
revolution while simultaneously embracing fresh food and beverages that
are portable, fresh, with differentiation that is familiar not different. Does your retail path forward look more
like yesterday than tomorrow? Why?